>I distrust my own personal experience, just as I distrust the personal
>experience of others. But for what it's worth, very very few of my
>contemporaries read seriously. I graduated from high school in 1947. Not
>more than about a half, I would say, of the candidates for the Ph.D. in
>English at Michigan read very intelligently.
As a late undergrad, I hung out with the MFA students at UAF. A friend of mine who graduated from that program told me recently he thought I was much better read than most of the MFA students. (Perhaps cynically, I replied, "Those who can, write. Those who can't, read.")
I think the arguments that there are about the same number of readers per capita in the population make good sense and are likely to be correct. However, what I don't see now on campus and did see in my youth was enthusiasm among a significant minority for a single, fairly current book.
Thanks,
John A
http://www.arkansawyer.com/wordpress/